Mitesh S. Patel, MD, MBA

Mitesh Patel, MD, MBA, MS, is Founding Director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit, the world’s first behavioral design team embedded within a health system. He researches how behavioral economics can be applied to health interventions to improve individual health behaviors. He has led several randomized, controlled trials that used wearable devices, smartphone applications, and workplace weight scales to track health behaviors, and evaluate the use of financial and social incentives to change behavior.

Dr. Patel has also studied how information technology-based interventions can be designed to incorporate behavioral economics, and change physician behaviors to reduce low-value services and increase the delivery of high-value care.

Dr. Patel has received a Career Development Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a Clinical Scientist Development Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and was the 2018 winner of the AcademyHealth Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award.

Dr. Patel is a Primary Care Physician at the Crescenz Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia. In addition to his LDI affiliation, he is faculty at the the University of Pennsylvania Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation, and the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics.